doclloyd

This new player looks amazing, especially the screen and thinness. However, the TV-out is interesting. When will Sony integrate their Walkman players with the Playstation Network to playback videos you rent or purchase? While I can certainly watch them on my PSP, having it on the Walkman too would be great, especially with this beautiful screen - and TV-out.

I've been eying the new A72x/82x series as I'm encoding more music 192Kbps or higher and the 4GB S616F isn't quite cutting it anymore. Outside of the storage upgrade, I'm torn about why I should buy another player. I like the enhancements Walkman728 mentions, but gapless on mp3's would be amazing to bring in on a firmware update. it's the one thing I miss the most from the ATRAC players of old. Supposedly, LAME-encoded mp3's can be played gapless (or so I thought I read at some point.) I can keep dreaming...

Thanks for the reply! That's great news that the speed is faster now. I'm sure it's the same for the S61x series as well. Here's hoping they make a more official announcement regarding the firmware update on the A80x series, unlike the current phone calls and emails some have received.

Not to bring this topic more... well, on-topic, but can anyone comment to my questions about transfer speed and video codec compatibilities? It seems like the thread went into comparing it to the Nano and discussing its features, etc... I'd like to hear more impressions about the NWZ-A818 itself! Thanks!

Also, on the video front, do the new models support the same videos I've been encoding with PSP Video 9 for... you guessed it, the PSP? I've been using the AVC format for video encodes, but the A80x currently doesn't support those videos. Let me know. Thanks!

After coming back from a two week vacation, it looks like a lot has happened in the DAP world. It's making me wonder how I should handle my future portable music needs... wait for this supposed firmware update for the A80x series mentioned at http://www.atraclife.com/forums/index.php?...c=4116&st=0, start converting all my free (with coupon) tracks from CONNECT to mp3 and start re-ripping all my music to mp3 or aac for the future... so much time. So much music. The open world is a better one to be sure, but it's a hard way to go for long-time Sony fans to switch from ATRAC. But, I suppose I could have all my music ready for use with a new Sony DAP or my SE Walkman phone (yes, big Sony fan here... PS3, HDTV, headphones, etc...) I've browsed this now long thread and nobody's asked or mentioned the transfer speed with drag and drop or with WMP. How fast is it? Is it like the S-70x or A80x series "Hi-Speed USB 2.0" but really runs at 1.x speeds? Or did it actually get an upgrade?

Right. I was hoping since the A80x series was a bit newer that it would have this functionality too. Maybe they'll add gapless for AAC in the future with a firmware update, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

I've definitely been using ATRAC as default, but it would be nice to have the same tracks to transfer to my SE w810 Walkman phone. I basically use the phone to listen to podcasts/mixes on the go and the A808 for everything else.

Well, this didn't seem to work for me... ripped the first CD from ATB's "The DJ: In the Mix 3" and there was definite gaps between tracks. ATRAC has really spoiled me in the gapless playback department. @pata2001, What settings did you use to trip the AAC tracks into SS? And what type of music did you try it out with?

I will give this a try with the A808 this weekend. This would be great and I would utilize my library with my Walkman phone too! We'll see.

While I agree with others that this isn't a surprise, my hope is that they still provide compatibility with all their existing Walkmans, including MD (esp. for record uploads) and everything else they've created that supports ATRAC. I have a large music library in ATRAC format and do not intend to re-rip all my music into mp3 or AAC. I'm not ready to let go of MD (ATRAC only to be compatible with my deck and bookshelf system) and I do enjoy ATRAC's sound. If Media Manager has better drag and drop support and podcast/vidcast support, it would be a better fit for everything Sony is putting out there -- and Sony Ericsson. With the A800 series and PSP's having drag and drop video and photo support, I don't see why music would be that far behind. As long as they can add on ATRAC support to Media Manager and read in my entire music library as is (maybe even remove the old DRM I have from tracks imported years ago before they made DRM not required on tracked I imported from CD's), I'm all for the changes that are coming. I hope Sony officially makes some official announcement about their plans so their current customers aren't feeling left in the dark. The next step is to make the changes swiftly. Lots of announcements are made by Sony but it seems little actually is executed.

Nice to see another Chicagoan on the boards! Once it's cleared the Chicago customs at the USPS, it only took mine a day or so to show up at work. EMS Speedpost was fast fast fast. Can't wait to get your impressions of the new toy.

Wow, lots of thoughts on the subject! I agree the flexibility of playlists to the older style "groups" cannot be argued. Only requiring one copy of a song vs. many if you have a song in multiple playlists has value. I think some additions in intelligence on the software would be nice to have. Something like "remove tracks from player with playlist?" or similar. Otherwise, it seems like the player is left in disarray after you remove the playlist, orphaned tracks in one way, because they didn't leave in the same way they came. Do others have experience with how other music players deal with playlists (iPods, Creative players, etc.)? Is this behavior the norm? Since it's my first device with real playlist support, I wasn't sure if this was normal. Thanks.

The idea makes enough sense, but I think it makes for a challenging go of managing the tracks on the device. This would be especially true if all I wanted to do is really remove the tracks from that playlist off the device altogether, all in one action, just like I did in putting them on the A808. I will toy around with the trash bin feature on the player itself and see if that does anything for me... but I think my understanding of playlists aren't quite in line with how the equipment works.

OK, so I decided to swap out the music on my A808 tonight, which included deleting a couple playlists I had. So I deleted the playlists via SonicStage. However, I noticed that the player still had all the tracks on it from that playlist! This is my first Sony device that actually supports playlists. Is this normal behavior or should I be removing playlists from the A808 in a different manner so it removes the files too? Because this could prove to be very annoying to manually remove tracks all the time... thanks for any help on this.